Cleveland Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin, who is also chair of city council's public safety committee, (far left), Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams, and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson
Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams
A protester holds up a sign as to the number of shots fired by 13 non- Black Cleveland cops who gunned down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell with 137 bullets Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio- Cleveland Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin, head of city's council's public safety committee, met with community activists at a rally Wednesday evening in the parking lot of Heritage Middle School and assured them that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's police chase policy would stay intact for now.
Activists held the rally to voice opposition to any changes in Jackson's policy.
"The policy will stay in place," said Griffin, who added that any changes to the policy would have to come by him as city council's safety committee chair.
A former community relations board director under Jackson, Griffin said the policy is a good policy that provides for "accountability."
Cleveland Police chief Calvin Williams, who is Black like Griffin and has been chief since February of 2014, has also said the policy is going nowhere.
The current policy, adopted in 2014 by Jackson behind a 2012 Cleveland police chase that left two unarmed Blacks dead and shot up by 13 non-Black cops slinging 137 bullets at them, essentially precludes a police chase absent suspicion that the suspect has either committed a violent felony or is under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Officers must also get supervisor approval to further a chase, the policy says, and road conditions, weather and other factors must also be taken into consideration.
A former city council president, Jackson has led the largely Black city of Cleveland since 2006 and has sole authority to alter the policy, absent legislation to the contrary that city council might adopt, and an override of any potential veto by the Black mayor who is up for reelection this year but, according to sources, is likely not to seek a historic fifth term in office.
Cleveland activist Kathy Wray Coleman, who led Wednesday's rally at Heritage Middle School along with activist Alfred Porter Jr, president of Black on Black Crime, thanked Griffin for standing with activists and the Black community on the policy issue, and said that "we will picket any Cleveland council person representing the Black community who pushes for any changes in this sound policy during an election year for city council and mayor."
Porter agreed, saying " I hope we do not have to picket these people."
Others at the rally included Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, East Cleveland Councilpersons Nate Martin and Ernie Smith, former East Cleveland School Board member Dr. Patricia Blochowiak, and a group of largely Black community activists who are fighting to keep the policy intact.
A former city council safety committee chair himself, Councilman Conwell said he does not agree with every aspect of Cleveland's policy, mainly the provision that requires permission by police from a supervisor to further a chase, though activists countered that supervisory permission for a chase minimizes deaths of innocent bystanders and that the recklessness by the Cleveland Police Department relative to chases merits a monitoring process in the least.
The policy controversy that brought about Wednesday's protest stems from a press conference on the policy held by Griffin, City Council President Kevin Kelley, and Ward 3 Councilman Kevin McCormack last Friday in the Tremont neighborhood on Cleveland's largely White west side.
Kelley, McCormack and most of the largely White west side council persons want the policy in its current form revised so police can do chases on misdemeanors and non violent felonies rather than to be limited to chases only when a violent crime or OVI is suspected.
The 17-member Cleveland City Council is roughly half Black and half White.
The police union wants Mayor Jackson to loosen restrictions on the policy and says its hands are tied, and that the policy subordinates police to the suspects they pursue and limits their authority to pursue suspects without restrictions.
A likely mayoral candidate this year, Kelley is siding with police and said so when city council debated the issue Wednesday morning during a Zoom hearing led by Griffin as head of city council's safety committee
Proponents of the chase policy say that in some instances police are misusing the policy to ignore crime because they think the policy makes no sense and is an abuse of discretion by the mayor.
The Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association and its leader Jeff Fulmer, vehemently oppose the policy.
Wednesday's rally by community activists was held at Heritage Middle School in East Cleveland by design because it is the site where Williams, 30 and Russell, 43, were gunned down some eight and a half years ago by 13-non-Black Cleveland cops following a car chase from downtown Cleveland that ended in the parking lot of the middle school.
The unprecedented tragedy occurred the night of Nov 29, 2012.
Here's what allegedly happened.
A White cop, according to public records, claims he mistook Russell's 1979 Chevy Malibu Classic backfiring near the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland and began pursuit of the homeless couple, also radioing the dispatch to call for backup, which came in droves, precautionary measures be damned.
Williams was a passenger in the car.
Though neither Williams nor Russell was wanted by the law or accused of a crime, some 276 patrol officers were working the night of the high speed 22 min. chase that ended in the Heritage Middle School parking lot in neighboring and impoverished East Cleveland, a Cleveland suburb, Williams and Russell chased by some 64 patrol cars, and literally fleeing for their lives.
The city later settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $3 million that was split between the families of the two victims, Russell leaving behind a grown disabled son.
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Former Cleveland police officer
Michael Brelo |
Of the 13 Cleveland officers that fired the combined 137 shots at Russell and Williams, 12 White and one Hispanic, six were fired, including Michael Brelo, who jumped on the hood of Russell's car and shot 49 times through the front windshield, both Russell and Williams dying at the scene.
Five of the six officers fired for their roles in the shooting had their jobs reinstated in 2017 by an arbitrator and are Michael Farley, Erin O'Donnell, Christopher Ereg, Wilfredo Diaz, and Brian Sabolik.
The sixth officer, officer Brelo, was not reinstated after he was fired roughly a year following an acquittal in May of 2015 on two counts of voluntary manslaughter in a bench trial before Democratic Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell, an acquittal that brought about community protests and some 71 arrests, mainly for minor infractions with police, though a few protesters faced felony charges.
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